Showing posts with label Artist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Artist. Show all posts

Saturday, May 14, 2022

May 14: Thomas Gainsborough, English painter

BORN MAY 14:

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) was an English painter best known--in my world, at least--for his The Blue Boy which hung (and hangs) at the Huntington Library, about five or six miles (an easy bike ride) from my childhood home. Until I was around 40, entry was free, and in my teen years I went often (often with a girl, to take pictures of her in the lush gardens). Anyway, uh, Gainsborough, yeah: One of the most important British artists of the second half of the 18th century, he was a prolific painter of portraits, also known for his landscapes. Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy. Other famous paintings (he made more than 300, 220 of which were portraits) include Mr. and Mrs. Andrews; The Watering Place; and the charming Girl with Pigs.

Navigation:


Topics , , ,

Friday, May 13, 2022

May 13: Georges Braque, French cubist

BORN MAY 13:

Name Georges Braque (1882-1963) was a French artist who co-founded (with Picasso) the modern style known as Cubism. After identifying with the Fauvist "wild beasts" from 1905, he became closely associated with Picasso until 1912. For a time the work of one was indistinguishable from that of the other, though Picasso's brash showmanship finally eclipsed Braque's fame. His later works reflect a softening of the sometimes-harsh cubist style. Cubism, by the way, is essentially an early-20th-century style in which objects are analyzed, broken up, and reassembled in an abstracted form; instead of depicting them from a single viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints simultaneously to represent it in a greater context. One listing of Braque's works names 243 paintings and drawings, aside from sculptures.

Navigation:


Topics , , ,

Thursday, May 12, 2022

May 12: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, English poet and painter

BORN MAY 12:

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (actually Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, 1828-1882) was an English poet and painter, and one of the Rossetti clan. Co-founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais), he was later the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement, including William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. His sensual art was part of a "medieval revival," influenced by Dante and Sir Thomas Malory, among others. His poetry includes "The Blessed Damozel" and the sonnet sequence, The House of Life.

Navigation:


Topics , , , ,

Wednesday, May 11, 2022

May 11: Salvador Dali, Spanish surrealist artist

BORN MAY 11:

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist known for the striking and bizarre images in his work. He lived in France during the Spanish Civil War, and the U.S. during World War II. His genres included painting, graphic arts, film, sculpture, design, and photography, sometimes in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote: fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays, and criticism. But his public persona is perhaps better remembered than anything he produced: the mustache, the pet ocelot ("Babou"), and the public behavior that might best be interpreted as "performance art." One of his best-known paintings is the one with the dripping clocks, Persistence of Memory; the disjointed figure in Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War); the slightly more traditional (less surrealistic) Christ of Saint John of the Cross and Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus); and way out there on the edge, The Hallucinogenic Toreador.

Navigation:


Topics , , ,

Saturday, April 23, 2022

Apr. 23: J. M. W. Turner, English painter

BORN APRIL 23:

J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851) was an English painter known for the expressive use of light and color in his paintings, as well as his imaginative landscapes. He produced over 550 oil paintings, 2,000 watercolors, and 30,000 works on paper. Today he is regarded as having elevated landscape painting to equal the eminence of painting historical subjects. He was a very private person who never married, but fathered two daughters by his housekeeper. In his final years he lived in squalor and poor health. His works include Dido building Carthage; The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons; Agrippina Landing with the Ashes of Germanicus; and Sunrise with Sea Monsters (a favorite, which--though incomplete--epitomizes his style).

Navigation:


Topics , , ,

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Apr. 20: Joan Miró , Spanish painter and sculptor

BORN APRIL 20:

Joan Miró (1893-1983) was a Spanish painter and sculptor born in Barcelona, where a museum has been dedicated to his work. He earned international acclaim for his Surrealistic work with a personal style. Its childlike nature reflects his interest in the human unconscious or subconscious mind. An iconoclast, he stated his contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an "assassination of painting" in favor of upsetting established paintings' visual elements.

Navigation:

Topics , , ,

Friday, April 15, 2022

Apr. 15: Leonardo da Vinci, Italian "Renaissance Man"

BORN APRIL 15:

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was an Italian polymath. When people say "Renaissance Man," I think of Leonardo. Bastard son of a pencil-pushing lawyer and a lower-class mom named Caterina, he was followed by a dozen half-siblings much younger than he, one by some 40 years. (Dad was busy.) Both his mother and father married--to other people--the year after he was born. But he had the good fortune to grow up 20 miles from Florence, where he studied and worked for the artist Verrocchio (who himself was a student of the great sculptor Donatello). But beyond the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, he worked as a military engineer. His Notebooks and manuscripts run to around 13,000 pages, including some rather mundane things like lists of groceries and people who owed him money. But there are also sketches for paintings and projects never realized; scientific studies of anatomy and biology; architectural drawings; "flying machines," including a prototype for a helicopter; a sort of tank; a chariot with spinning scythes out in front of the horses; shoes for walking on water; musical instruments; a mechanical knight; hydraulic pumps; finned mortar shells; and a steam-powered cannon. He may well have been homosexual. His tenderness for animals (he purchased caged birds and released them, but this may have been to observe their flight) suggests he may have been vegetarian.

Navigation:


Topics , , , ,

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Mar. 30: Vincent van Gogh, Dutch artist

BORN MARCH 30:

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter. Little-known in his lifetime, he is now one of the world's best-known painters with some of the most recognizable works. In just ten years, he created about 2,100 artworks, 860 being oil paintings, including The Starry Night; Bedroom at Arles; several Self-Portraits; Café Terrace at Night; Wheatfield with Crows; The Night Café; Vase with Twelve Sunflowers; and more. Most of his works date to the last two years of his life. They are characterized by bold colors and dramatic brushwork. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, and famously severed part of his own left ear; he died by his own hand at age 37. His younger brother Theo, an art dealer, supported Vincent financially, and it was Theo's wife who brought him to prominence after both Vincent's and Theo's deaths.

Navigation:


Topics , , ,

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Mar. 17: Kate Greenaway, English Victorian children's book artist and writer

BORN MARCH 17:

Catherine "Kate" Greenaway (1846-1901) was an English Victorian artist and writer, known for her children's book illustrations. Starting out as a creator of the new-fangled greeting card, she received her first commission to illustrate a children's book in 1867. She published her breakout book, Under the Window, in 1879, and sold over 100,000 copies. It was one of only two books that she wrote (the other is Marigold Garden, 1885) though she illustrated over 150 as a result of something called the "Greenaway vogue," and she became widely imitated. She died of breast cancer at the age of 55. The Kate Greenaway Medal was established in her honor in 1955, awarded annually in the UK to an illustrator of children's books.

Navigation:


Topics , , , , , , ,

Sunday, March 6, 2022

Mar. 6: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian artist

BORN MARCH 6:

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, to some the epitome of an artist ("His work is good, but he's no Michelangelo"). His contemporaries called him Il Divino, "The Divine One." Not particularly well-known today for his homoerotic poetry, he is better remembered for his monumental sculpture of David (relaxed but alert just before slaying Goliath, sling draped over his shoulder); the excruciating Pietà, with the crucified Christ in his mother's lap; the painting of The Last Judgment with over 300 figures, covering the whole altar wall of the Sistine Chapel; and of course the astonishing, awe-inspiring ceiling of that same chamber, with a similar number of figures. Il Divino indeed.

Navigation:


Topics , , ,

Friday, February 25, 2022

Feb. 25: Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French artist

BORN FEBRUARY 25:

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was a French artist and a leader in the development of Impressionism, a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality. At times in his student days he could not afford to buy paint; in 1990 one of his paintings sold for $78.1 million. His sons Pierre, Jean, and Claude all became artists (an actor, filmmaker, and ceramicist respectively). Outstanding among his several thousand paintings are Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette, Luncheon of the Boating Party, Girls at the Piano, and A Girl with a Watering Can.

Navigation:


Topics , , ,

Thursday, February 24, 2022

Feb. 24: Winslow Homer, American painter

BORN FEBRUARY 24:

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was an American landscape painter best known for sailboats and such. Born in the seaport town of Boston, his mother was his first art teacher. His father, always trying to get ahead, left for the California Gold Rush when Winslow was 13. For 20 years he worked as an illustrator, mostly freelance, and illustrated battle and home-front scenes of the Civil War, often on assignment. Post-war he painted more, until in 1875 he gave up illustration altogether. Rural scenes (Snap the Whip) and the everyday lives of African Americans (A Visit from the Old Mistress) were common subjects, in addition to the maritime scenes for which he is known (Breezing Up; Eight Bells).

Navigation:


Topics , , ,

Sunday, February 20, 2022

Feb. 20: Ansel Adams, American photographer

BORN FEBRUARY 20:

Ansel Adams (1902-1984) was one of America's best-known photographers, famed for his black-and-white images of the American West. With fellow photographer Fred Archer he developed the "Zone System," a way to calculate exposures to capture maximum detail in the shadows and highlights of an image. He not only photographed wild places; he was an environmentalist who worked to protect and preserve them through working with the Sierra Club and the U.S. Department of the Interior; a famous book title was My Camera in the National Parks. Famous shots include Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1927; and Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941.

Navigation:


Topics , , , , , ,

Friday, December 31, 2021

Dec. 31: Henri Matisse, French artist

BORN DECEMBER 31:

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) French artist, one of the Fauves (wild beasts) known for their use of intense color. He is commonly regarded, with Picasso, as one of the artists responsible for significant developments in 20th-century arts. Representative works include Woman with a Hat; The Joy of Life; Nu bleu; and La Danse.

Navigation:


Topics , , ,

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Dec. 8: James Thurber, American cartoonist and author

BORN DECEMBER 8:

James Thurber (1894-1961) American cartoonist and author. His best-known short story, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," gained fame in two movie adaptations. "The Catbird Seat" and "The Unicorn in the Garden" are also well known, as is his autobiography, My Life and Hard Times. He also wrote children's books.

Navigation:


Topics , , , , , ,

Thursday, December 2, 2021

Dec. 2: Georges Seurat, French painter

BORN DECEMBER 2:

Georges Seurat (1859-1891) French post-impressionist painter known for pointillism, the formation of an image out of monochrome dots--not unlike the use of pixels today. His large 1886 Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (6.6 × 9.8 feet, or 2 x 3 meters) inspired Stephen Sondheim's 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George. Seurat's other large work of about the same size, Bathers at Asnières, prompted a critic to call it "monstrous" and "conceived in a coarse, vulgar, and commonplace mind." Posterity differs.

Navigation:


Topics , , ,

Sunday, November 28, 2021

Nov. 28: William Blake, English poet, artist, and mystic

BORN NOVEMBER 28:

William Blake (1757-1827) English poet and artist; also something of a mystic, as reflected in both his writings and his illustrations. He wrote Songs of Innocence and of Experience; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; "Jerusalem" ("And did these feet...?"); Milton; and much more.

Navigation:


Topics , , , , , , ,

Monday, November 15, 2021

Nov. 15: Georgia O'Keeffe, American artist

BORN NOVEMBER 15:

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) American artist called the "Mother of American modernism," who captured America from the skyscrapers of Manhattan to the deserts of New Mexico. Born in Wisconsin, she studied in Chicago and moved around a lot before settling in New York, where in her late 30s she married photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. A few years later she began spending part of the year in the Southwest, and moved there permanently after Stieglitz's death, for the last four decades of her life.

Navigation:


Topics , , , ,

Sunday, November 14, 2021

Nov. 14: Claude Monet, French Impressionist painter

BORN NOVEMBER 14:

Claude Monet (1840-1926) French founding Impressionist painter (the movement was named for his painting, "Impression, Sunrise"); and series such as Rouen Cathedral; London Parliament; Water Lilies; Poplars; Haystacks; and many more attempts to capture changes in light and the passing of seasons.

Navigation:


Topics , , , ,

Friday, November 12, 2021

Nov. 12: Auguste Rodin, French sculptor

BORN NOVEMBER 12:

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) French sculptor best known for his massive nude Thinker (which was cast full-sized at least 28 times). Criticized in his lifetime for the gritty realism of his work, he is a forerunner of modern representative sculpture. Other famed works include The Age of Bronze; The Burghers of Calais; and The Kiss.

Navigation:


Topics , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)